Vocalic /r/ Flashcards (ar, or, air, ear) — Spelling
Articulation · Grades 3–6 · 12 cards
Session summary (SOAP)
Stays on this screen. Nothing is saved or sent.
Mark a card Correct, Correct with cue or Incorrect and the summary writes itself here.
How to run it
Group by sound and then look at the spellings. Door, four, corn, fork and horse all share a vowel and are written oor, our, or and orse; bear, chair and hair share a vowel and are written ear, air and air. Sorting them by sound first makes the spelling variety visible as a problem to be memorised rather than one to be reasoned out.
Cueing ladder
Start at the top. Add support one step at a time.
- IndependentAfter building each word, the student says it aloud. Wait 3 seconds.Log as correct
- Visual cuePoint to your mouth, or show the mouth picture for /r/, before the student tries again.Log as cued
- Verbal modelSay the word; the student says it right after you.Log as cued
- Placement cueSides of your tongue up against your top back teeth, tip either lifted and pulled back or pointed down with the tongue bunched up. Lips slightly rounded, and the tip never touches the roof.Log as cued
Adjust it
Drop to syllables ('ra' and 'ree'), or use fewer cards.
Put each word in a short carrier phrase with no /r/ in it or mix in /r/ words from another position.
Matching IEP goal
Given word cards, Student will produce /r/ in vocalic contexts in single words in 8 of 10 opportunities across 3 consecutive sessions, given no more than a visual cue.
Send it home through the parent portal →About this activity
The twelve vocalic /r/ words — car, star, door, four, bear, chair, deer, hair, corn, fork, barn, horse — as a spelling task. Derived from the flashcard deck, and the spelling is genuinely hard here: door and four rhyme and are spelled differently, and bear, chair and hair use three spellings for one sound.
What to listen for
Watch door and four specifically, which rhyme perfectly and share no spelling. A student who writes dour or fore is applying a reasonable pattern to a word that does not follow it. Notice bear, which is also a homophone of bare — a meaning problem sitting on top of a spelling one.
Carrying it home
Ask which spelling a word uses rather than for the whole word. Door or four, bear or chair — the answer has to be remembered, and the asking is what builds the memory.
What's in this activity
- car
- star
- door
- four
- bear
- chair
- deer
- hair
- corn
- fork
- barn
- horse
Questions
- How is this different from the flashcards?
- Same twelve words, built from letters. The multiple spellings for one sound only cause trouble in writing, which reading never exposes.
- Do I need to sign in?
- No, it plays free with no account.
- Why do 'door' and 'four' rhyme but look different?
- English spells that vowel several ways with no rule to choose between them. These have to be learned word by word, which is worth saying so students stop hunting for a pattern.
Use this board with your caseload
With a free account, every correct, cued and incorrect mark is saved to the student and scored against their IEP goal, with the data written up for you. Assign it as home practice through the parent portal.
Track progress freeFree for SLPs. No card, no trial clock.